United States Military Service and Training (1939-1960). Heavy
Bombardment Training 1943-1944 New Guinea 90th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force
(the famous "Jolly Rogers") aircraft Commander (46 Combat missions).

Served for the last two years of World War II, seeing action
on thirty missions over Europe with the 8th AF, 467th BG, 788th BS.Shown with the Bernard R. Jones Crew in Training
with "093" (V2) [42-100093]...

First player drafted in the 1949 National Football League draft, chosen by the Philadelphia Eagles. With the Eagles, he starred on both offense (as a center) and defense (as a linebacker). He was a member of the Eagles' NFL Championship teams in 1949 and 1960.

AKA "Concrete Charlie" -
A tough and highly effective tackler, Bednarik is perhaps best known for sending Frank Gifford of the New York Giants into early retirement with a hit in 1960.

His first assignment after flying training was at Barksdale
Field, La., where as a member of the initial cadre of the 93d Bombardment Group,
he flew B-24 Liberators. Moving with the organization to Ft. Myers, Fla., he
flew antisubmarine patrol.

In August 1942 he flew with the 93d Bombardment Group to
England, the first B-24 Group to join the Eighth Air Force. Until April 1944, he
served in various positions with the group, including commander of the 329th
Bombardment Squadron, group operations and then executive officer. It was as
executive officer that he took part in the famous low-level bombing raid against
oil refineries at Ploesti, Rumania, Aug. 1, 1943. The 93d Group was the second
of five B-24 groups that raided Ploesti from a temporary base at Bengasi, Libya.
The 93d group, led by its commander, flew directly into heavy defenses to hit
three of the six target refineries. The lead plane and 10 others were shot down
or crashed on the target. General Brown, then a major, took over the lead of the
battered 93d and led it back to Bengasi. He received the Distinguished Service
Cross for his actions on that mission.

His military decorations and awards include the Distinguished
Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters, Silver Star, Legion of Merit with
two oak leaf clusters, Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, Bronze
Star Medal, Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters, Joint Service Commendation
Medal and Army Commendation Medal.

Promoted to full general, he was sent to Vietnam in 1968 to
command the Seventh Air Force.

Served with the 15th AF, 455th BG.
Awarded the DFC when he crash-landed his shot-up B-24 at Zara, Yugoslavia.

After the war, he went to the University of Iowa where he earned
his doctorate in physiology. The nickname "Doc" followed him to a coaching job
at Cortland State University in New York, where he was also a professor. In
1968, at Indiana University, Doc had successfully built a team of gold medalists
and world record holders including Charlie Hickcox, Jim Montgomery, and Mark
Spitz.

In 1979, he swam the English Channel at age 58, and became the
oldest man (at that time) to successfully complete the swim. What made the swim
even more difficult, was that four years earlier, Doc had been diagnosed with
Parkinson's Disease!

Indian born Sabu Dastagir was already an established American
film star by the late 1930s, became a United States citizen, enlisted in the Army Air
Forces, and served 40 missions as a ball turret gunner in B-24
Liberators in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

Born in the Bronx, he earned a bachelor's degree from St. John's
University in 1942. He then joined the Army Air Corps, serving as a Navigator.
On his 50th mission, he was shot down 26 Jun 44 while bombing the oil refinery at Moosbierbaum, Austria.
He was held prisoner for a year. That experience led to his first novel, "The
Prisoners of Combine D" (Holt, 1957), which won an award from the American
Library Association. Mr. Giovannitti won a Peabody award for his television
work. He wrote, directed and produced documentaries. For NBC he produced "The
American Alcoholic," "The Hill Country: LBJ's Texas," "In White-Collar America,"
"The Energy Crisis" and "And Who Shall Feed This World." With Fred Freed, he was
co-producer of "The Decision To Drop the Bomb," and they wrote a book with the
same title. For ABC, he produced "Black Business in White America" and "Walking
Hard: On Juvenile Delinquency."

He was on his 50th mission when his B-24 Liberator was shot down
over Austria on 26 June 1944 and became a POW for nearly a year, in Stalag Luft
III's Center Compound, including the winter march to Germany and liberation in
Bavaria.

Flew 56 missions and participated
in the invasion of Italy. When Herbert was discharged in 1945 he was captain and
had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three oak leaf
clusters.

8th AF 487 BG group commander; shot down
in Europe, but evaded capture and made it back to England.
In 1942 Capt. Beirne Lay Jr. (retired as Col.) was one of the officers who helped to form the bombing arm of the USAAF – the 8th Air Force, and in 1944 he alluded capture after his B-24 was shot down in Nazi-occupied France. When he returned to America, Lay captivated audiences with his flair for storytelling and by writing highly successful screenplays that captured the spirit of his time in Europe, and the lifestyle of American pilots, without giving way to any of the “usual Hollywood errors.”

Joined the Eighth Air Force, for which he completed thirty-five
missions as a pilot of a B-24 bomber with the 467th BG. Later he served with the
491st BG as Intelligence Officer assisting Verle Pope, the Group Intelligence
Officer.

Received Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.

Won the Academy Award in 1956 as best director for his debut
feature film, Marty, which starred Ernest Borgnine.

As a pilot of a B-24 flying "The Hump" in the Far East during WWII, he supplied a much-appreciated daily cartoon for the Officers' Mess.

From George (Himself)

"I might want to add that I actually did pencil
both the daily and the Sunday Phantom. From 1962 to l984 I mainly penciled
the Sunday story, and from 1984 to 1994 I penciled the daily as well
the Sunday story. When Sy Barry retired in 1994, I took over and got my name on
the Phantom. In June 2000 I gave up drawing the Sunday stories in order to have
more leisure time, but till this day I draw the daily strip." -- George

One year after enlisting in the Army Air Corps, was commissioned
as a 2nd Lieutenant Bombardier at Victorville Air Force Base in California. Flew
25 combat missions (in the China, Burma, India theater of war) and received the
Air medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Was
the bombardier on the plane that bombed and destroyed the real bridge made
famous in the film
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

From Paul himself : "I was with the 493rd BS from Sep
44 until Sep 45. I was a 1st Lt Bombardier with Bob Lindquist's crew:
http://www.7thbg.org/LindquistsCrew.htm. We flew 25 combat missions and flew
gas over the "Hump" to Luliang, China. After the war I graduated from Loyola U.
in Los Angeles and became an actor in Hollywood. I made approximately 65 motion
pictures and appeared in some 500 TV shows. I starred in House of Wax, To Hell
and Back and was co-star on the TV series The Untouchables among others.
I wrote a book, recently published and it includes some of my experiences while
I was with the 7th BG."

Carroll Holmes Pratt served with the 8th
AF, 44th BG, 67th BS on "unnamed" 42-41017 (L). On 1 October 1943, 2/Lt. Carroll
H. Pratt was on his 6th mission as Co-pilot with 1/Lt. Reginald L. Carpenter,
flying from Oudna, Tunisia, to Wiener Neustadt, Austria, to bomb a Messerschmitt
airframe plant. Became a POW and interned at Stalag Luft III. - see pages 129
and 130 of Will Lundy's "44th Bomb Group Roll of Honor and Casualties".

His Father, Carroll "Skipper" Pratt Sr., was the Chief of the
Sound Department at MGM in Culver City, California at the original development
of sound, and his Son, Scott Pratt, is a
producer.

He started his acting career in numerous television shows in the
1950s and into the 1970s. He also provided the voice for commercials and
cartoons of the era. Here's minute and a half of John Stephenson doing "Officer
Dibble" (Top Cat), "Rock Quarry" (The Flintstones), and a "German Officer" in
Hogan's Heroes (6:23-7:53):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoF__Y6gTRg&feature=youtu.be&t=6m23s

Joined USAAC in 1940, was initially refused entry because he was
5 pounds under the required 148 pounds, but he talked the recruitment officer
into ignoring the test. Eventually became a Colonel, 8th AF Sqn Cmdr 703 BS 445
BG, and Ops Officer 453 BG (&rt;456 BG), awarded the Air Medal, the
Distinguished Flying Cross, the Croix de Guerre, and 7 battle stars. Flew B-52
and B-58 in Vietnam. In 1959, while in the USAFR, he was promoted to BrigGenl,
the highest ranking actor in military history (but would not allow his war
record to be used in movies or as publicity).

Upon finishing Harvard, he entered the Army Air Corps Reserve, received pilot
wings and lieutenant's commission at Steward Field, New York, in March 1944.
Served with the 8th AF / 458th BG (no combat missions) then transferred to the
44th BG / 68th BS.

Recalled to active duty in 1951, he spent eight months as a
squadron executive officer at Bolling Air Force Base and sixteen months as a
technical instructor at the Armed Forces Special Weapons School in Sandia Base,
New Mexico. He retired from service as a full colonel in 1976.

HARRY C. STUBBS
has published a lot of books under his Pen Name "Hal
Clement"...Hal Clement Books

Mission of Gravity

Since 1972, he has also painted astronomical and
science-fiction art AKA "George Richard"...
It is assumed by fans that Star Trek honored Hal by naming the U.S.S. Clement in
his honor.

Became a Lieutenant Colonel flying
military commanders. He later admitted to journalists that the one career he
would have liked to follow was an airline pilot. Toward the end of his service
Watson worked for Major General Follett Bradley, who suggested that he should
try to follow his father at IBM. Watson regularly flew Bradley, the director of
lend-lease programs to the Soviet Union, to Moscow during the war. On these
trips he learned Russian, which would later serve him well as the American
Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Personal experience inspired David Westheimer in the writing of Von Ryan's Express. The Houston-born writer had served with distinction in World War II as a B-24 navigator (Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal) and had been a prisoner of war both in Italy and in Germany. His recreation of the tension, the fear and the absurdities of the situation bring suspense and sharp humor to this amazing story of unlikely heroism.

Westheimer is the author of some 12 novels, the first of which -- Summer on the Water -- was published in 1948. A graduate of Rice University, he worked for the Houston Post before turning his attention to writing fulltime. His novels include Watching Out for Dulie, The Magic Fallacy and, in 1970, a sequel to Von Ryan's Express called Von Ryan's Return. Westheimer's 1965 novel My Sweet Charlie became a play and, in 1968, an acclaimed television film. The author continued to serve in the Air Force Reserve -- holding the rank of lieutenant colonel when Von Ryan's Express was published -- and returned to the Houston Post briefly to write a column (1984-88).

Conducting a search for a lost aircraft and crew, mechanical difficulties caused
"GREEN HORNET" to
crash into the ocean on 27 May 43, killing eight of the eleven aboard. The three
survivors, with little food and no water, subsisted on captured rainwater and
small fish eaten raw, and were strafed by patrolling Japanese aircraft on
several occasions. One of the survivors died after forty days adrift.

He was Flying out of Fersfield-Winfarthing airfield near Diss in
Norfolk, while on a
top-secret RAF Special Air Unit mission officially called "Operation
Aphrodite" (also known as "Project Anvil"). The crew consisted of only two
men, himself and his Co-Pilot, Lieutenant Wilford J. Willy, USN.

He died of a heart attack while on set, brought on by having to
carry Gina Lollobrigida up and down the stairs 40 times for retakes, while
filming "Solomon and Sheba" in Madrid, Spain! (Well, if you have to go...)

Best known as TV's Eliot Ness. Began his acting career more than
60 years ago opposite Deanna Durbin in First Love (1939). He earned an Oscar
nomination for Written on the Wind (1956), won an Emmy in 1960 as Ness in The
Untouchables (1959-63), and served as host of TV's Unsolved Mysteries for an
entire decade (1988-99).